


A Tale of Two Eeries

by miss_nettles_wife



Category: Eerie Indiana, Eerie Indiana: The Other Dimension
Genre: Abuse, Dark Character, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Memory Altering, Minor Character Death, Recreational Drug Use, black magic, evil!marshall, major character death (not in story), reality altering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 10:20:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20580908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_nettles_wife/pseuds/miss_nettles_wife
Summary: Dash X, after Marshall's take over.





	A Tale of Two Eeries

**Author's Note:**

> it's been a long time since i wrote anything this dark and sad. .<. sorry dash. to be clear, this aint dark!mars, this is just straight up evil!mars. anywhom, let me know what you think.

Sometimes, Dash liked to remember the good days. 

There weren’t any good days left in his future, so the old ones were the only ones he had left. 

The old days, when it was him, Marshall and Simon, solving mysteries and having fun. He used to have fun, he thought to himself, as he remembered running across roof tops, ducking down alleys and sticking it to the mayor. Sleeping in Marshall’s teenage bedroom, eating at his mother’s table and the weight of Simon’s head on his arm when he fell asleep. 

Good memories. He tried to save them for when he really needed something good. He feared that they’d lose their worth if he thought them too much. Or worse, Marshall would take them from him. Dash wasn’t sure what powers Marshall had accured over the years but he didn’t put him about mind altering. 

And as far as Dash’s days went, this one was as close to being good as he could manage. Marshall had mostly ignored him, the rain was a gentle and comforting noise on the roof of Mayor Chisel’s old place, he didn’t even feel that weak from charging up Marshall’s power crystals. He’d slept a lot, made lunch for Marshall, even managed to force himself to relax enough to enjoy a book. 

But now he was tightly wound. He was always tightly wound; but now he felt like he was bound to break apart. Which was funny, because the object of his abject terror wasn’t that scary at all. 

Mitchell Taylor, on the other side of the television. Dash kept his eyes trained on the floor, like he always did, and did his best not to eavesdrop on the discussion taking place. It was hard not to, and he usually failed. Old habits die hard, he just had to make sure Marshall didn’t know he was listening in. 

“Stanley says sightings of your milkmen have increased exponentially. I told you to put a pin in that; Marshall.” 

Stanley Hope. Simon Holmes. 

It comforted Dash to know that some version of Simon lived on. That some version of Simon had lived past fifteen, that he’d never been crushed, that Dash had never been too slow to push him out of the way. He wondered if Mitchell knew how important his Simon was, if he made sure to mind where he was. 

He knew that there was no Dash in Mitchell’s Eerie. That wasn’t to say that they hadn’t looked, just that one had never turned up. Just Mitchell, Simon and someone Mitchell occasionally referred warmly to as Rodney. He liked to think it was better like that, how it was meant to be, no anomalous aliens to be falsely trusted with the safety of their friends. But even so, to have that warm tone turned on him, for just a moment, it was the sort of thing he dreamed about. 

A hand came down in his hair. Marshall must be annoyed at being called out. He threaded those long, long fingers through his unbrushed hair, and it felt nice. Which made him nervous; because the only time Marshall made things feel nice was so he could make it feel bad later. But he kept his eyes trained on the ground in front of him. 

Mitchell used to call a lot more frequently. Just after Simon died, and they managed; for the first time, to stop both Eerie’s from consuming each other. He would call monthly to check in, to report to Marshall any changes on his side of the split and at the time, Dash had still been an equal. He watched Mitchell grow up with Marshall over the televisions of Eerie.

But over time, it had gotten more and more infrequent. Bi-monthly, six monthly, and now? Barely once a year. He imagined that it was because Mitchell could see what no one else had been able to. What Marshall was becoming. Didn’t want the portal open for very long in case traces of Marshall rubbed off on him. It was easy to forget that Mitchell and Marshall were the same person, especially now. But they were, and he could only think Mitchell saw whatever Marshall was becoming in himself and became afraid. 

He wouldn’t be wrong. Dash was afraid of Marshall too.

The discussion taking place over his head is getting heated. Interesting. It takes a lot to get Marshall heated these days. Mitchell must know how to get under his skin. Probably how he would get under his own skin. Were he capable of feeling anything aside from fear, he might feel smug that there was someone out there to remind Marshall that he was still human. 

In spite of it all. 

He was a human, he still had human needs, like conversation and intimacy. Dash could only imagine that was why he was kept around. Sometimes, in the quiet of the night, when everything was still, he would think back to the beginning. 

To Janet Donner, warning him about Marshall. He’d seen her not to long ago, on a rare trip outside the mansion that used to belong to the Chisel family. Marshall wanted something from her; but Dash doesn’t know what. He brought Dash, as if to say ‘look at what I can do, see the beasts I can tame? I’ll do the same to you.” 

She’d married a televison preahcer’s gay son in college. He’d been with his boyfriend when Marshall came over, locked away in his bedroom. Dash had thought that he’d have liked his own bedroom at the time. He’d watched her fingers as she rolled herself a joint on cherry printed paper. She hadn’t even bothered to take off her long, conservative skirt, just her cardigan and blouse, revealing her daring; lacy lingerie underneath. The tiny metal jesus sitting in the space between her collar bones, shining in the glow of her lighter. 

Janet used to be able to get a rise out of anyone. But this time, she’d sat, listened, smoked her joint, and told him to get lost. 

Dash had watched as Marshall got up, looked as if he was about to take hold of Dash’s leash, but surprised her. Compelled by forces he couldn’t control, Dash launched at her, knocking her out of the chair and up against the table behind her. The thing was wood, her head bounced off it like basket ball off the rim of the hoop. 

She landed still, and in a heap, bleeding from her head. Dash was frozen with fear, Janet had been his friend. She’d offered him a plane trip out of Eerie, right to California with her. Swore up and down that her husband was a good man, that he didn’t have to be here. That Simon wouldn’t want him to be here. That he could leave with her. He’d told her no, he had to be there for Marshall. 

She didn’t move after she landed. He watched as Marshall grabbed tight hold of her tiny Jesus necklace, and then yanked. The clasp snapped with a click in his palm. Dash stayed next to the plush, leather armchair. He took hold of the lead, and through Janet’s television, they were gone. 

That had been years ago. He’d seen her recently, on television. He didn’t usually watch, but Marshall had told him too. For years, he’d tried to convince himself that she wasn’t dead. And she wasn’t. She was there, on the stage, with her husband who was preaching about the ills of Homosexuality. She was wearing her conservative skirt, blouse, blue cardigan and a tiny Jesus around her neck. Her hair was blonde now, and straight. In her left hand, there was a cane. 

Marshall twisted a strand of hair around his finger and then tugged, pulling his mind back to the present. Mitchell must be  _ really _ getting under his skin. He tuned back in. 

“We’re the same person; Mars.” Mitchell said, simply. 

“We are nothing alike.” Marshall responded, pulling Dash’s hair in time with each of his words. It hurts, a lot. Dash shut his eyes, and tried to find something else to think about. 

His mind skitters to Melanie Monroe, or, just Monroe these days. Perhaps it’s pathetic of him, but in his mind eye she’s a paragon of safety. He’d seen her just last week, when Marshall brought him along to one of the powers that be meetings, where she was representing the interests of the Police Department. When Marshall started pulling on his hair, she’d told him to stop, and when he’d cast those cold, blue eyes over her, she reminded him that she didn’t have his no gun policy. It had unsettled him. Monroe always unsettled him, since her second heart transplant. 

The doctors said it was because she wasn’t taking her pills, but everyone knew that she’d never do that; and if she did then Janet would have forced them down her throat. Maybe Devon just gave up the ghost. Whatever the case, she spent months with an artificial heart that stopped periodically and she had to reset. When she got her new heart, it was like Devon took her kindness with him. She broke up with Janet, which was a surprise because if there was a couple he was banking on it would have been them. 

He’d asked Janet about it later. He didn’t remember when; his memory was full of gaping chasms and there was nothing he could do but accept it. At the time, he’d had the collar yes, but no leash yet. So a long time ago, then. Janet had been, as was her habit, smoking a cherry printed joint and her husband was fucking his boyfriend in the other room. She was unperturbed by this. Dash wondered infrequently if she had lovers of her own. But at the time, she’d just taken a long, deep drag, and put her red leather boots up on the couch and replied 

“She told me she was setting me free.” 

“Free?” He’d asked; like it was a foriegn concept and to him it kind of was. 

“When she was clinically dead, she said Devon gave her this vision, and that she wanted me to follow my destiny to get the Hell out of Eerie.” 

“So she knew she was going to stay.”

“There was never a flicker of doubt. If she hadn’t dumped me, I would have come back. For her.” 

“You still could.” She’d given him a sad smile, and touched his face, and that made him nervous. Her long nails were sharp, but her touch feather light over his bruised face. 

“No. I couldn’t.” She said, “Because I’d kill him.”

“I don’t want you to kill him.” He doesn’t know why he said this. Perhaps he still thought that this would end and things would go back to how they were. Perhaps he thought that he deserved it. He doesn’t know. He thinks me might say the same thing today. 

“I know that. Which is why I can’t go back.” Her touch doesn’t change. Gentle, soft. He is pathetic. The thought settles over him like a blanket. He used to have bite, and grit. He used to fight back. He would never wear a collar. As her hand moves away, Janet’s fingers catch on the hanging metal identification tag. It reads PROPERTY OF MARSHALL TELLER and nothing else. “Come away with me.” She pleads, softly. “We’ll go away from here, I’ll take us to see Mitchell and Stanley. He’ll never find us.” 

For some reason, a reason he doesn’t know, he shakes his head, and her hand falls away. 

“No.” He said, and then, even softer than that, “Sometimes, almosts are almosts.” 

“Okay.” She whispered, “But I’m right here. When you’re ready, I’m right here.” 

She was gone now. Even if she was still where she was, she wouldn’t want anything to do with him. But that gentle touch on his face, it hadn’t hurt. It had been so so gentle. 

Monroe was not gentle, by any stretch of the imagination. She was rude, and more than that, she was mean. But she noticed him. People didn’t notice him and the ones that did were afraid of Marshall. Everyone was afraid of Marshall. 

Even his own parents, though that was not of their doing. Mayor Chisel’s sister had poisoned them against him, in retaliation for Marshall ousting her brother. But her poisoning wasn’t about that. The Tellers weren’t political, they were proud of Marshall for following his dreams. What she did was just about as cruel as what Marshall did. She blamed Marshall for what happened to Simon. In drips and drabs, here and there, slowly planting seeds of resentment in their hearts against their eldest son. Plants she nurtured like the children she never had, until they hated him just as much as she did. It must have been one Hell of a feat. Marilyn loved her son more than life, and Edgar wasn’t much different. She must have played on their hurt for not saving Simon from his parents. Or maybe they truly did resent Marshall, it wasn’t difficult for anyone with their senses about them. 

Dash hadn’t had his senses about him since Simon died. They never came back, after he saw that dying twitch of that little, white hand. A particularly sharp tug forced him into the present. His head was sore. Marshall used to pull on his hair, a long time ago, but that had almost felt good. It was a good thing his mother hated him, he could stand to watch Marshall play mind games on him, to give him impossible tasks, those soft touches, for just one soft touch, he’d do about anything. He could watch them be played with Monroe, and Mitchell Taylor and even Mister Radford, but he wouldn’t have been able to take watching him play them with his mother.

“This is the end of the discussion.” 

Possessed by some ghost of his former self, the one who still had some fire left in him, he looked up at the television. He’d never done that before, and if the way Marshall yanked his hair was anything to go by he’d never do it again but for just a second, he caught a glimpse of Stanley and Mitchell. 

Mitchell was the opposite of Marshall. Marshall had always been tall and thin but in the intervening years whatever mass he’d had wasted away until he was all sharp angles and bony outcroppings. Mitchell was bigger, both in height and bulk. He’d grown up into a handsome man, with a round face and thin lips. But he could have guessed that. No, he wanted to know what the Simon who lived looked like. 

The Simon Who Lived had thick eyebrows. That was the first thing Dash, or anyone who looked at him would notice. Thick, dark eyebrows. Tawny hair. Sharp jaw. He didn’t look like Simon, not how Dash would have imagined him too look, but he was a Simon. He filed the memory away, tight, he never wanted to forget this Simon, the Simon he could have known. 

“We don’t care what you do in your dimension, if you want to make slaves of your lovers and destroy the things you love, that’s your business. Don’t bring it here again, or you’ll be in breach of our peace agreement, which I’m sure the Eerie Dairy and Postal Delivery would just love to hear.” 

Mitchell might not look like Marshall, might not have the same job, or same friends but that? That was all Marshall and against his will, he shivered. 

“You don’t need to involve them.” Marshall said, swiftly. 

“Don’t make me. Goodbye Marshall.” Mitchell said, sharply. Then, “See you around, Dash.” 

“Bye Dash.” The Simon who Lived echoed. And then the connection shut down, and they were gone. 

…

Marshall went to bed after that. Dash went with him, because he didn’t have much choice in the matter. They slept in the room that had, probably at some point, belonged to Mayor Chisel. The bed was huge, and soft. Dash liked the night. The night was a time for him to be alone, even if there was nowhere for him to go and he longed to be alone. 

He tried not to squirm too much as Marshall gently ran his hands along Dash’s bare chest. Marshall always slept in pajamas, a set mostly. His favourites were printed with what seemed to be moths. One thing Dash had always found strange, despite his near total control over his life, and the way he was treated, Marshall had never forced himself on Dash more than a kiss. And this wasn’t something he could surmise among the gaps in his memory. This was a truth. In fact, he hadn’t seem Marshall naked in years, and he knew that because he didn’t know if the string of scared runes along his face went onto his chest, because he’d never seen it. 

Marshall’s hands were soft, kind. They didn’t linger, just traced along the scars he had, scars Dash remembered receiving, ones he didn’t. It felt good, and that made him tense because Marshall never made anything feel good unless it was so he could make it feel bad. Once, a long time ago now, he’d said it was so he’d appreciate the soft touches more. Dash doesn’t believe that. 

“I miss Simon.” Marshall whispered, sounding very much like the thirteen year old boy he was when they met. 

“So do I.” Dash whispered back. He usually wouldn’t speak out of turn like that but something told him that Marshall wanted a response. 

“Do you think he’d be proud?” He asked, “Of what I’ve built? How I erased all the bad from Eerie?” 

“I think so.” Dash lies. He knows damn well Simon would hate it. Simon would be disgusted with what has become of them. Simon didn’t like his parents, but he was pretty sure the kid didn’t want them dead. He didn’t like crime, but he wouldn’t want Marshall’s tyrannical rule to stomp out any signs of life. No matter how tightly he clung to the no guns policy. 

“Hm.” Marshall sighed, and then Dash felt what could only be described as someone plunging their fingers into his brain matter. Like his brain was soft putty to be molded, and it hurt. He twitched violently against his will, tried to get away from Marshall; but couldn’t. His ever-present leash had been attached to the wall above the bed. He wasn’t going anywhere. 

“What?” He managed to gasp. Marshall just smiled to him, a sort of sadistic smile, one that was the same but different. Behind his eyes, memory flashed up. God, Marshall was going through his brain. It’s like he’s peeled away a layer of haze, and he can see the world in blistering colour. 

“I make you forget this eyes night.” He says, and it’s like he has too many fingers, “I’ll never get tired of that look you get, when you realize where I am.”

Marshall could augment reality, if he wanted. Could control the very fibres of the universe. If he wanted into Dash’s miserable brain, he had it. Happy memories started coming up. A picnic. Janet organised it, Marshall looks so handsome in a denim jacket. Simon is sharing a comic book he made with them. The sun is warm, the air is fresh. He loves this memory, he thinks of it often. 

“You embarrassed me, in front of Mitchell.” He says, “Maybe I should take this. Remind you.” 

“Don’t, please, don’t!” He pleads. Marshall has too many fingers, on his body, in his hair, in his mouth, his brain. “I need them, Marshall you don’t understand, I need them.” He needed to stop moving, but his body kept squirming and twitching, trying so hard to get away. Marshall’s gentle hands had become tight vices. When did he get so strong? When did Dash get so weak?

It all makes sense, suddenly. The gaps in his memory were not just a result of repeated brain injury, they were gone. Marshall had taken them. For some reason, this makes him begin to cry. He didn’t have any memories from life before Marshall, he had no childhood to look back on, no parents to memorize, just nothingness, and now Marshall wanted to take what he did have? It was almost too much for his beaten, bloodied spirt to handle. He has to get away, he cannot stay. 

Then it stops. The pain returns to a manageable level. Marshall studies him carefully. 

“Do you still wonder where you come from?” 

“I never stop.” He confessed. Marshall hummed and thumbed through more memory, gently this time. It doesn’t feel good, but it doesn’t hurt. 

“Oh, that’s interesting.” Marshall remarked, “I could let these memories out, though someone has gone to a lot of trouble to hide them.” Several long, long moments pass. “You were a cute kid, Dash.” 

“You know?” He whispered. It’s almost as agonizing as when Marshall was attempting to rip his memories out. 

“Of course I do. I told you, we do this every night, you just don’t remember.” He says, and Dash starts to cry again. 

“Tell me.” He pleads, “Tell me, please. Do I have a family? Do they love me? Do I have a name?” 

“Don’t know. I d on’t speak alien.” Marshall said, and thumbed through more recent memories before pulling back. 

“I might keep that from you for another day, since you weren't very well behaved today. But Dash, you should see yourself when I let those memories out. I remember why I first fell in love with you.” 

Dash can hardly breathe, let alone respond, so Marshall continues - 

“But for tonight, I think I might let you keep that memory. It’s our anniversary, and I’m in a good mood. I want to play a slideshow of Simon.” 

The only comfort Dash can find is that he won’t remember this tomorrow.


End file.
